Authors@Google: David Graeber, DEBT: The First 5,000 Years

DEBT: The First 5,000 Years

While the "national debt" has been the concern du jour of many economists, commentators and politicians, little attention is ever paid to the historical significance of debt.

For thousands of years, the struggle between rich and poor has largely taken the form of conflicts between creditors and debtors—of arguments about the rights and wrongs of interest payments, debt peonage, amnesty, repossession, restitution, the sequestering of sheep, the seizing of vineyards, and the selling of debtors' children into slavery. By the same token, for the past five thousand years, popular insurrections have begun the same way: with the ritual destruction of debt records—tablets, papyri, ledgers; whatever form they might have taken in any particular time and place.

Enter anthropologist David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years (July, ISBN 978-1-933633-86-2), which uses these struggles to show that the history of debt is also a history of morality and culture.

In the throes of the recent economic crisis, with the very defining institutions of capitalism crumbling, surveys showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans felt that the country's banks should not be rescued—whatever the economic consequences—but that ordinary citizens stuck with bad mortgages should be bailed out. The notion of morality as a matter of paying one's debts runs deeper in the United States than in almost any other country.

Beginning with a sharp critique of economics (which since Adam Smith has erroneously argued that all human economies evolved out of barter), Graeber carefully shows that everything from the ancient work of law and religion to human notions like "guilt," "sin," and "redemption," are deeply influenced by ancients debates about credit and debt.

It is no accident that debt continues to fuel political debate, from the crippling debt crises that have gripped Greece and Ireland, to our own debate over whether to raise the debt ceiling. Debt, an incredibly captivating narrative spanning 5,000 years, puts these crises into their full context and illuminates one of the thorniest subjects in all of history.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Graeber teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the author of Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value, Lost People, and Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire.

This talk was hosted by Boris Debic on behalf of the Authors@Google program.

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  Education

[paul fogarty]

DRINK IT!!!



[Myhai01]

you should read the book before arguing against it...

[Kamyontani]

whoa my mind is fucked government created markets. I don't know what to believe anymore lol.

[meifangchan]

this is what happened in our lectures with him every week haha.

[FacePaster]

I'm wondering if perhaps he has already finished the coffee before he started, reaches for it because he wants a drink, then realizes that it's empty, over and over.

[paul fogarty]

Hey there... it's because he keeps reaching for his drink and keeps not taking a drink. That's all.

[FreeUsAllNowGod]

Fill me in on the "Drink It" can you?

[dlmaniac]

My intuition is clearly better & deeper than that of Graeber and his followers but I don't need it as I have sth even more convincing - the irrefutable fact that gold & silver have been chosen as money throughout history and all over the world w/o govt enforcement contrary to what Graeber is saying.

In fact it's the opposite of Graeber's theory: Govt always wants to outlaw G&S so that they could force you to use their issued paper, which allows them to finance own spending w/ no limit.

[drmodestoesq]

He can't.... he hasn't paid for it yet.

[drmodestoesq]

What are you basing this assumption on? I guess your intuition is better than multiple sourced empirical evidence. Graeber is basing his analysis on carefully and exhaustively compiled historical and anthropological research. But I guess you see things clearly and he is "brainwashed."

[karutta21]

brilliant book



[PolKsio]

was the seminar for men only?